Guest Posts

The Assumption of Dumbing Down the Message

This is a guest post from my wife Jacki. She’s the author of Starting Over and Standing Up, the first two books in the Starsville Saga. A version of this post originally appeared on her blog, but I wanted to share it here as I feel the question of definition, and the assumptions we make when it comes to dumbing down our own messages, transfer well to business and marketing in general, as well as our own blog communities.

Starting Over and Standing Up, the first two books in the Starsville Saga,?are currently listed in the Young Adult (YA) genre.

As the saga progresses, the characters get older and deal with more mature things. The last book in the saga?will be in the adult genre, meant for ages 18+.

I?m not sure how the audience will react to that, but I wrote my characters the way I thought I should.

They go from junior high, to high school, to university and adulthood. I hope my audience will grow with them.

I?ve been told that Starting Over and Standing Up should be in mixed genres for the following reasons:

The main character is a child.
The characters have dark back stories that are too deep for young adults to understand.

I tend to disagree with both of these things.

First, the main character starts telling her story at the age of 13, but the books take place over the course of four years. Second, I believe that there is nothing too deep for the YA audience to understand. Sadly, too many people can relate to these dark issues.

YA is one of the genres I like to read for its simplicity. It doesn?t take the author 300 pages to describe the sunset. The sunset is what it is, and for that I?m happy. In general though, I find there are three types of YA authors:

The authors that dumb down content for their YA readers.
The authors that dumb down vocabulary for their YA readers.
The good authors.

Maybe Starting Over and Standing Up deal with some darker issues, but I?m not going to dumb it down. I?m also not going to write condescendingly.

I write the way I speak. So whether you are 14 years old or 40 years old, my language will remain consistent. Minus the profanity.

I hope that’s okay with you.

About the author: Jaclyn Aurore is the author of young adult fiction?books?The Starsville Saga:?Starting Over,?Standing Up,?Giving In,?Hanging On,?Leaving Behind, and the stand alone fantasy,?My Life Without Me.?Her books have been described as ?Wonderfully human?, ?Evokes the awkwardness of teenage life perfectly?, ?Heart-wrenching and heartwarming at the same time?, ?Twilight without the vampires?, and ?Nothing at all like Twilight?. You can read more from Jaclyn on her official website.

Why Brand Managers Fail (and How to Get Back in the Driving Seat)

This is a guest post from Michael Weissman.

Companies make huge investments in brand marketing — nearly $500 billion globally each year? — to communicate as effectively and beautifully as possible.

But as soon as they distribute their brand content to resellers, blogs, social media and other online outlets, the content becomes out-of-date, old content gets reused and/or new content gets misused. In other words, it?s one hot mess.

Why is this happening?

Managing distributed content is expensive. It costs 10x more to manage and update content than it costs to create it. As a result, marketers operate more like brand ?launchers? that lose control over their content once it?s ?launched? or sent to others. That is, until now.

A new technology has been created that allows digital marketers to reclaim control over their brands online ? even when sharing content on websites they don?t own.

Why Brand Managers Fail

To date, tools for controlling distributed content haven?t been available. Without automated tools, when a marketer wants to update content across 1,000 reseller websites, each reseller has to manually receive an update and then make modifications to their site.

For companies with a broad product line ? this could mean over 100,000 updates per year or more. What tools do marketers have to automate the distribution, updating and compliance tracking of this content? None.

This problem isn?t isolated.

Most companies suffer from problems with online brand consistency. One survey said that most marketers see consistency getting worse, not better. Delivering online brand consistency is difficult for even the largest brands to achieve.

A recent test showed that only 37% of Pepsi logos online are correct and only 8% of Dolby logos are correct ? even though the logos were redesigned over 5 years ago. This is definitely a big issue everyone needs to address.

Equally frustrating, not controlling the online brand presence has ripple effects on other areas of marketing and business operations:

Productivity suffers.? Who wants to waste time? No one. Yet, that?s what happens when partners have to be convinced to update content manually.

Trustworthiness drops.?An inconsistent brand image sends the wrong message ? especially when partners are becoming more important than ever.

Search gets cluttered.?Old content gets in the way of marketer?s new messages. Out of date content often gets ranked higher than new, more relevant messages.

Legal hot water.?Expired promotional or regulated content that still exists on partner sites can put companies in jeopardy or force the company to honor out-of-date offers.

Poor story-telling.?Brand messages get delivered in fragments, forcing the customer to ?connect the dots? for a bigger brand story on their own.

Blind to ROI.?Real content tracking and ROI remains elusive. Little usable data on where and how the brand is available to marketers.

Clearly, marketers have been set up to fail.

Emerging Technology to the Rescue

Brand managers can thank technology for giving them back the ?Remote.? New solutions are emerging that help brands distribute content and still keep control ? even when sharing branded content on third party sites the brand doesn?t own.

No more wasted time.
No more manual updates.
No more out-of-date content.
No more running blind.

Technology can help put an end to the pain points of syndicating brand content.

What?s on the brand manager?s wish list?? Full time remote brand management, real-time updates, complete tracking, and the dream capability?to ?set it and forget it?? eliminating the need to constantly be monitoring the web for outdated logos, images and offers.

Here are two new technologies that are making this happen:

SYNQY (pronounced sync ee) is a radical new service that integrates and syndicates brand content like logos, images, PDFs, HTML and videos in a way that can be shared, updated and tracked in real time. (www.synqy.com)

?Dlvr.it (pronounced deliver it) syndicates of social media content. ? like a wire service but to the social media outlets (www.dlvr.it)

For decades the only way to ensure brand control and deliver the desired high-quality consumer experience was to centralize the engagement on the company web site, and do everything possible to drive traffic to that place.

Today, this model is turned upside-down; bringing high-quality, controlled and consistent content to anywhere that brand exists online today.

This finally puts the brand manager back in the driver?s seat and helps realize the impact and performance that they desire:? content and messaging that properly reflects the brand 24/7 no matter where it goes.?

About the author: With twenty-five years of high technology marketing experience with large companies and start-ups?and 15 of those years in senior executive positions?Michael Weissman is currently Chairman and CEO of SYNQY Corporation?(SYNQY.com)?the first company enabling marketers to consistently deliver and control brand experiences on web sites they don?t own, transforming static brand assets into a fully-functional platform that delivers relevant content and services to the consumer, right where they are already engaged online. He may be reached at?www.SYNQY.com.

image: Daniel Pisano

Turning Fans Into Performers ? Dan Deacon and the Power of Youtility

This is a guest post from Jay Baer.

Today?s consumers are staring at an invitation avalanche, with every company asking for likes, follows, clicks and attention. This is on top of all the legacy advertising that envelops us like a straightjacket.

Lots of books have been written that tell you the way to break through is just to be an ?amazing? company. Pretty much all of them say you can win hearts and minds by doing things differently, providing knock-your-socks-off customer service, or fundamentally changing your corporate culture.

But your company probably isn?t amazing. And becoming amazing is incredibly difficult, and doesn?t produce reliable, linear results. So instead of betting all your money on amazing, what if you just focused on being useful? What if you decided to inform, rather than promote?

If you sell something, you make a customer today; if you help someone, you can create a customer for life.

Marketing Sideways

I call this Youtility. Not utility because a utility is a faceless commodity. Youtility is marketing upside down.

Instead of marketing that?s needed by companies, Youtility is marketing that?s wanted by customers. Youtility is massively useful information, provided for free, that creates long-term trust and kinship between your company and your customers.

Youtility In Your Pocket

But Youtility isn?t all business, and Dan Deacon is proving it every night.

“For the first time, having your phone out at a concert is not a jerk move,” says the description of the official app for Dan Deacon, a Baltimore-based electronic musician known for his engaging live performances. The app turns concert-goers’ phones into a synchronized light show and even an extra instrument that Deacon can “play” from the stage. A short YouTube video demonstrates the app in action.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/R8UlLBuzy6Q[/youtube]

With the app installed and running on a smartphone, Deacon can control the devices en mass by playing audio tones that “instruct” the phones to flash, change color, make sounds and more. It’s quite a spectacle, and a surprise even to fans who have downloaded the app and ostensibly have an idea of what to expect.

“It’s a really cool moment when Dan first plays the tone and then all of the phones change color,” app co-creator Keith Lea says. “Usually people are a little shocked. They’re not really ready for it to work. People are used to their phones being magic, but this registers as a different sort of magic.”

The app has created significant industry chatter for Deacon and Lea, with articles in Rolling Stone, Billboard, SPIN, CMJ and more.

The technology and story behind the genesis of this example of situational Youtility is remarkable.

An Obvious Answer

Says co-creator Lea, “Me and Dan and Alan Reznick, who is also involved with the app, we were all on a bus together. I was running tech and they were both performing on this little tour around the East Coast….I guess Dan had seen the Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremonies and he saw that they handed out LED bracelets and had them sync up. Dan’s idea was why did they bother going through the effort of handing out all of these little LEDs when everybody has, essentially, a little light in their pocket.”

Lea recalls that, as Deacon’s “nerdiest friends,” he and Reznick were asked about the feasibility of using smartphones in this way, which instigated weekly meetings to work on the project, which was more difficult than initially imagined.

“You’d think getting a bunch of pretty sophisticated little mini computers to do something all at once would be easy,? Lea said. ?We first thought the obvious thing was to use WiFi…but we called a couple of networking contractors and just none of them had any ideas because of the need to get 500 to 1,000 people on a wireless network that needs to be torn down and put up every night.”

Simple Solution, Big Outcome

After abandoning WiFi as the syncing technology, the team considered using existing 3G and 4G cellular networks as a connection point but realized that access wasn’t universally strong at all show locations, and music festivals often feature overloaded cellular networks.

Digging deeper, they took an inventory of all the sensor arrays present across all smartphones and realized, “Oh, well every phone obviously has a microphone and a speaker,” remembers Lea, who used the neo-lithic days of dial-up Internet connections as inspiration. “Back in the 90’s we all got on the Internet through a phone connection, and it’s just audio that’s being used to transmit data.”

Deacon and team have no plans to charge for the application, and, while licensing the technology to other artists is certainly a possibility, this is one instance where Youtility isn’t about marketing and brand-building.

“Maybe this is a little trite, but it is pretty cool that a couple artists and a programmer got together, and for a really tiny budget came up with something that is transforming the way people look at their cell phones in this performance context,” Lea says.

Excerpted from the New York Times best sellerYoutility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype by Jay Baer. See YoutilityBook.com for other resources.

Youtility Excerpt:

Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype – Exclusive Free Excerpt from Jay Baer

About the author:?Jay Baer is a hype-free social media and content strategist & speaker, and author of the New York Times best selling business book?Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype. Jay is the founder of http://convinceandconvert.com and host of the Social Pros podcast.

Why You Need to Go Beyond Just Local Search

This is a guest post by Adam Smith.

Like many things on the internet, Local Search has always existed – long before Google, Google Maps or Google+ Local.

In this article I?m going to explain how you can increase your company?s exposure through Local Search, with examples from current client Technojobs to past clients including GO Outdoors and Mothercare.

I?ll also cover how to the work involved and potential rewards, how to estimate where you’ll appear, how much traffic Google Keyword Tool says you’ll get, how much traffic you’ll actually get and to not just focus on towns and cities, but counties too.

Local Search as it was

In the dawn of time (well, the start of the internet), there was no Google Maps and the concept of Local Search hadn?t been dreamt up yet.

But you had major retailers, like Mothercare for example, who had stores in every major town, city and shopping centre throughout the UK.

So to help their customers find their stores, they created Store Finders on their websites, which in turn created a page for every single one of their stores.

It was still early days and SEO was virtually unheard of. So none of these pages were optimised beyond having ?Brand Name + Town Name? as their Title Tag. They were purely there for usability.

In fact, these pages haven?t changed since then.

However, they ranked top whenever someone typed ?Mothercare Edinburgh? into Yahoo, Lycos or any other search engine.

Understandably, these Store Finder pages still rank top for these brand related search terms today.

Local Search as it is now

In recent years Local Search has become more complicated with Web Pages, Google+ Local results and Google Maps embedded in the SERPs.

So while there is a tendency for marketing professionals to focus their Local Search efforts on Google+ Local pages, this is only a small piece of Local Search, because where the Web Pages, Google+ Local results and Google Maps actually appear in a Local SERP (if at all) tends to vary from search term to search term.

So why not create a strategy to optimise all of it and increase your exposure?

Linking your Local Search pages

When I worked on GO Outdoors, they were in a similar position to Mothercare, with lots of Store Finder pages, but no Google+ Local pages.

So I set about creating all of the Google+ Local pages (filling out all the fields, including the correct categories and cramming as many relevant keywords into the on page description as possible!) and then linked each and every one of them to their relevant Store Finder pages.

The Store Finder pages were then made to be as beautiful and user friendly as possible with loads of big bright photos and lovely content to entice people to visit the stores ? which is the most important part of the business model for GO Outdoors.

It sounds simple, but you?d be surprised how many businesses still haven?t done it. Or how many businesses have linked all of their Google+ Local pages back to their home page *cough*Next*cough*.

This really baffles me, because Local Search is a very specific user action. Users are actively searching for a page relevant to their location, not a company home page (unless your business only has one location). Otherwise you?d be putting your customers all the way back to the start of their search journey. Now there?s a cue for search abandonment if ever there was one.

Obviously, we don?t want to do that.

Non Brand Search

Because GO Outdoors is such a big, powerful website it was very easy to rank in Local Search for a variety of terms without any Title Tag optimisation, for example:

“camping shop” “town name” / “outdoor shop” “town name”

Instead, Google seemed to rank the Store Finder pages based on keywords highlighted from the on page content and/or Meta Description, which was interesting. There?s also a high volume of long tail traffic around each of the pages as a result.

The same could be said for county related Local Searches:

“camping shop” “county name” / “outdoor shop” “county name”

But if Google wasn?t ranking their Store Finder pages in this way, or GO Outdoors wasn?t such a monster of a website, I could have gone even further and included more keywords in the Title Tags of their Store Finder pages.

For example: ?GO Outdoors Basildon? could be changed to ?GO Outdoors Camping Shop in Basildon Essex?.

This would help the page to rank for a variety of Local Search terms that include “camping shop”, “town name”, “outdoor shop” and “county name”.

For the rest, your store needs to be close to the centre of your location, have links, reviews and a number of other things summarised below.

Google+ Local Best Practice Guidelines

Setting Up

Lots of locations can be a gradual and time consuming process
Login/set up using Google Account
Bulk upload form for multiple stores
Fill out all fields for maximum exposure
May need to manually place Map Pointer for each store
Store photos should also be added to aid visibility after set up
Some fields can only be filled out after initial set up
Listings will not appear publicly until they are confirmed

Confirmation

Every Google+ Local listing requires confirmation from its specific location
This can be a telephone confirmation or postal confirmation
However, listings manually approved by Google can be extremely slow to action
Any changes (like uploading photos) will put the listing status back to Pending Approval

Ranking Factors

Optimisation of keywords for local search terms in title and description
Optimisation of categories
Include location related keywords. Eg: ?Brand? ?Shop Type? ?Village/Town/City? ?County??
Look at Mobile Search results in Google Analytics to get more location related search ideas
Physical distance from city centre
5 or more Google reviews.
Links!

Link Building

Regular anchor text link building to Google+ Local results page
Review Sites reviews: Google scrapes info from leading review sites
Examples: reviewcentre.com, trustpilot.co.uk, shopsafe.co.uk, idealo.co.uk
Google+ Local reviews placed by users with Google Accounts

Reporting

Google+ Local dashboard shows Impressions and Actions for each listing for 30 days
Google+ Local dashboard also shows status of each listing

Google Location Advertising

Companies can pay for their stores to be displayed in the Google AdWords results
This appears as a blue pointer in Google Maps

Local search for non-physical businesses

Here at Technojobs we have a London office, so our home page ranks for IT jobs London. But we also display thousands of jobs across the UK with the majority of permanent jobs in the IT industry based in London, Bristol and Manchester.

In this niche Local Search isn?t for a physical location. It?s for a specific type of IT job in a location. So everyone is creating pages for all the different types of jobs in major towns, cities and counties.

However, Google is starting to include Google+ Local results and Google Maps in the SERPs for ?IT Jobs? + ?Major City? Local Search terms.

Because Technojobs is a jobs board, we only have 1 physical location, so there?s a chance that the jobs boards could lose out to recruitment agencies with physical locations in the major towns and cities nationwide.

But are these physical locations really relevant to the intentions of users? searches?

Probably not.

But it?s something to be aware of for anyone whose business receives Local Search traffic without the need for a physical location to visit.

In the meantime I have a lot of link building to do, because our website isn?t one of the strongest, which means it isn?t going to rank itself like GO Outdoors did.

Forecasting the Impact of Local Search

If you?re trying to pitch a Local Search strategy to your boss or client, they will want to know the ROI for the amount of work involved.

You can start by planning out the search terms you intend to rank for, then put them all into Google Keyword Tool.

Go through the first page of results for each search term and estimate where your Store Finder Page will rank based on the overall strength of your website. It?s also worth checking your Google Analytics to see how much traffic you get for Local Searches already, which will help you get a better ?feel? for this.

As you go through the first page of results for each search term, also estimate where your Google+ Local Page will appear if Local Listings are appearing. This can also be based on the overall strength of your website, as well as the location of your business in relation to the centre of town.

Next, search online for the most recent Click Through Rates for each position in the SERPs.

Calculate how much traffic you expect to get for each search term based on estimated rankings, traffic and CTRs. Then apply a very big pinch of salt to manage expectations.

Once again, compare to any existing Local Search rankings and traffic in your Google Analytics so you?ve got something based in reality as a guideline for these measurements.

Authorship Markup, Geo Location, Personalisation other Google things

Local and social search are really big topics, and while I would love to dig deeper, we can only scratch the surface at this stage, because it?s all so new.

But, we can make some assumptions based on what we know!

Authorship Markup

We know that Google+ Author Markup is about giving authority to a Google+ Profile that posts and gets links back from niche specific content.

So does this mean that a highly successful Google+ Profile of a food critic could Review your restaurant and leave a 4 Star review on the restaurant?s Google+ Local page and it would benefit that page greater than a good review from the average joe?

Let?s break this down another way into basic link building and relevancy to a Google+ page from lots of other pages.

You have a page that has 1,000 links from high Page Rank websites in the motorsports niche. Any links from that page with 1,000 links will have a lot of authority (and relevancy) if they point to a web page that?s motorsports related.

The page with 1,000 links just happens to be a Google+ Profile page. That?s the only difference.

What does it mean for your Google+ Local or Store Finder page? Basically that these are the kinds of people you?d really like links from? *ahem* I mean, to invite to your restaurant, motorsports event or in-store promotion. Especially if they?re local to your location.

Which brings me on to?

Geo Location and Personalisation

We all know that if you?re logged into your Google Account, you?ll see personalised search results in the SERPs based on your user behaviour and the user behaviour of your connections.

The same goes for Local Search results. And you?ll see if your friends have +1?d a restaurant or other website you?re seeing in your results.

So that?s an obvious benefit for online marketeers to promote their business to prominent bloggers, community leaders and other Linkerati.

But there?s also Geo Location to consider. If you open a Google Incognito Window in your browser and make a generic search, like ?Toy Shop? for example, you will see different results based on your location. This is partly caused by personalisation.

Rand Fishkin over at SeoMoz was explaining how at one conference he got everyone in the room to change their web browser location to the city they were in at that moment and then to make a specific search and click on a specific result.

Due to the sheer number of people searching in that location and choosing a particular result, it was promoted higher in the rankings for searching in that Geo Location the next day.

Scary stuff!

Similarly, insurance brand More Than have a TV advert where a marching band decked in the brand’s colours, accompanied by a giant teapot arrives in St Albans in Hertfordshire.

Now in theory (this is very unlikely, but bear with me), More Than could have used their analytics to identify St Albans as an affluent hot spot for their business where a high volume of insurance related searches are made.

And what better way to appear socially, geo-locally and search enginely than a marketing campaign targeted at St Albans to give their brand association with that hot spot of their prime target audience?

That?s the theory anyway.

Summary

Obviously the impact of Local Search is proportional to the reach of your business.

If you?re a nationwide retailer, you?ve got a lot of search terms to chase after. But if you?re teaching people to ride motorcycles in a car park in Hemel Hempstead, you?ll have a lot less.

But as with anything you do, the better you do it, the more rewarding it will be. Not just from a search engine ranking angle, but from a usability perspective as well.

So just continue to do good, quality online marketing and keep all the SEO and user experience in mind as you do it.

After all, Google Bot is always getting smarter and there are just too many search terms to manually link build for. Just be awesome instead!

About the author: SEO, copywriter, and internet marketeer, Adam Smith lives a life of swashbuckling adventure in the digital spaces while working in house for Technojobs in the UK as an Online Marketing Manager. For more detailed insights track him down on Google+.

Beyond Contests: How Facebook Apps Can Boost Your Brand’s Visibility

This is a guest post by Jim Belosic.

Facebook contests, especially giveaways and sweepstakes, are popular on Facebook for a good reason: if the prize is right, the contest generates buzz and motivates people to spread the word about the contest and the brand that?s hosting it.

We?ve seen ShortStack users install a contest app and gain of thousands of Likes within a few days in response to a well-run contest.

A contest or giveaway isn?t the only way to increase engagement, though. In fact, there are lots of fun ways you can use Facebook apps to increase interaction with your followers month after month, allowing you to use contests sparingly so they?re something they look forward to.

Since contests generally last about 30 days, and it would be difficult to run one month after month, it?s important to think about other ways you can boost visibility day in and day out.

Here are a few ideas:

1.? Use a Fan Reveal App to Get Users Excited About New Features

Ask your customers/users to Like your Page and in exchange reveal new products/features or make product-release announcements. Fans of your brand want to know what they can expect next from you, and whether you own a bakery or a manufacturing company, people who use your products want to know what you?ve got in the pipeline.

A Facebook app is a great way to let them know. A few movie and video game companies have teased their fans with snippets of trailers from upcoming releases — the caveat is that the trailer is only revealed with new Likes so existing fans are motivated to ask their friends to Like the page.

2. Inform Your Customers With a Newsletter App

Adding a newsletter signup app to your page is an easy way to increase your business? visibility. You can even ask people to like your Page in order to reveal the newsletter signup form. That way you have an additional way to communicate with your users.

You can use status updates to tease newsletter content and then direct your fans to the app where they can sign up to receive the newsletter.

3. Let Your Customers Request Reservations With an Appointment App

Any small business owner who wears many hats should try using an app that allows his or her clients/customers to request or even book appointments or reservations via Facebook.

You can ask for name, telephone number and times that a customer wants to come and then call them to book or confirm an appointment. You can also iFrame in a more sophisticated reservation system that will actually make the reservation for your customers, something like OpenTable.

4. Add Another Communication Channel With a Request for More Information App

A small staff can be overwhelmed by phone calls and email requests for more information about your company?s products. Using a ?request? app gives prospective customers access to the information they seek, such as lists of products or services, or even cost estimates.

And if you?re collecting data via a form, take the opportunity to sign your customers up for a newsletter, to gauge their interest in a new product or service you?re thinking about adding to your line-up or ask for their location or age.

5. Increase Efficiency Even More With a Contact Us/Customer Support App

The easier you make it for people to get in touch with you, the better. Using a ?contact us? app allows your fans/customers to send an email to specific departments within your company.

For example, you can send them straight to whomever handles sales, customer support, press inquiries, etc. streamlining the contact process. You also link to this type of app whenever someone comments on a post or or asks for more information, keeping them inside your Facebook ?property.?

6. Collect Feedback With a Testimonials App

At ShortStack we have an app we call ?Make us Better? where customers can leave us feedback about our service. It?s a great way for us to learn what we?re doing right and what our users would like us to do differently.

As tempting as it may be, avoid posting only glowing reviews of your business — prospective customers might not believe what they read because, well, no one is perfect!

7. Do Some Good With a Donation App

You can use an app to let your friends and followers make donations — or match your company?s donations — to charities. Various apps have different features, but donation apps typically show your giving history, let your followers know which charities you?ve donated to, and give them an opportunity to share donation messages.

8. Reduce the Risk of Investing in Unwanted New Products or Services With a Voting or Survey App

People like to participate in surveys. As a business, using a survey or voting app is a great way to learn what kinds of service your customers wish you would provide, or even what color coffee cup they?d be most likely to buy.

Using a voting or survey app can ultimately reduce the risk of investing in new products or services only to have them bomb.

For example, if you own a bakery and results from a survey include tons of requests for gluten-free desserts, you might consider adding equipment to your kitchen that would allow this.

If you own a hair salon and a ?What new service are you most likely to use? poll suggests that you?d do a booming business in massage, you? might decide to invest in a massage table and hire a massage therapist.

Gut feeling is good, but data that backs it up is even better.

9. Connect With Other Services

Using apps to connect with other platforms and services that you use allows your users to have a seamless social media experience with your company, using Facebook as the hub.

For instance, you can install apps that allow you to display videos from YouTube or Vimeo on your Page, display photo sets from Flickr, display Tweets or share podcasts, songs or any other recording you made on SoundCloud.

These are just a sampling of ways that you can use apps to build your presence on Facebook without hosting a contest. Have you experimented with non-contest apps? Which ones? do you find the most useful for building engagement?

About the author: Jim Belosic is the CEO of ShortStack, a self-service custom app design tool used to create apps for Facebook Pages, websites and mobile web browsing. ShortStack provides the tools for small businesses, graphic designers, agencies and corporations to create apps with contests and forms, fan gates, product lines and more. Connect with Jim on Twitter.